The Death of Gamespotting

Gamespot editor Greg Kasavin had the news via his journal that next week Gamespotting will receive a bullet to the head. The longrunning feature on the site is being replaced with a running commentary on games and the industry entitled Freeplay. From the article: "I've always found it flattering how much some people seem to like that feature, which was, above all, an outlet. It's the sort of outlet I've always personally needed while working here, because the standard types of content I help to produce don't give me the context to talk about some of the issues that really matter to me. Now the same itch can be scratched by blogging or whatever, though as some of you have observed, it's just not the same." Seen via the Video Game Ombudsman.

Never heard of it

[APE992]

So popular a feature it took Slashdot to inform me of it's existance. Granted I never did hover over Gamespot a whole lot.

Re:Never heard of it

[Seumas]

So popular, there's only two posts after all this time.

Re:Reason?

[ElectricBrain]

Probably to create buzz and generate traffic.

Such a bad metaphor

[Dancin_Santa]

I guess that the gaming culture breeds a sort of insensitivity to death, and that's the reason Kasavin is so easily able to put a "bullet to the head" of his column. Forgive me if I find such phrasing to be in bad taste.

Re:Such a bad metaphor

[cowscows]

Yeah, and besides that, it doesn't make any sense. He says:

"it's getting a bullet in the head, which is to say, it's gonna go out with a bang. That's right, our long-running staff feature will be going on a permanent vacation real soon."

It sounds to me that it's going out fairly quietly. It'll just stop being there. Going out "with a bang" should be a little more exciting and provocative than that. Going out with a bang means that in the final installment, they tell us how all the writers have spent the l

You guys crack me up!

[dreamquick]

As if there'd be any worthwhile content on Gamespot... hehe...

Being serious though, gamespot was never "all that" with their biased and uninformative reviews - the final nail in their coffin was their delusions of grandure when they decided that they'd *charge* for access to older reviews and content without improving their quality in the process.

Hello? Charging for crappy reviews on the web is a waste of time - "Oh woe is me, Gamespot won't let me access this review unless I sign up for their service, w

Re:You guys crack me up!

[77Punker]

This is what "gamespotting" is? Who gives a damn about any single game review site? I get nearly all of my game information from http://gamerankings.com/ [gamerankings.com] and http://gamefaqs.com/ [gamefaqs.com]. If it isn't there, it's on Google.

Re:You guys crack me up!

[dreamquick]

"Gamespotting" is/was an editorial/bloggy column that featured on the gamespot site (hence the name), and from what I've looked at while reading TFA I'm suprised the series survived this long because it's pretty poor even by gamespot standards...

It's an online version of the "filler" page they used to use in games magazines to occupy otherwise wasted space - you know the one where each staff member gets a sentence to sum up their thoughts on the current issue.

The concept sucked in the 90's, still sucks no

A little late...

[Dissonant]

The last Gamespotting has already been posted. The article in the link is almost two weeks old.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6128136/index.htm l [gamespot.com]